The retail securities industry over the past several years has undergone radical changes, particularly with the advent of discount Brokerage and “on-line trading”. Retail investors now have a plurality of options when selecting a desired method of investment execution and advice. The options range from self-directed on-line trading to, in the other extreme, investing through a retail “full service” Brokerage firm. The advent of Discount Brokerage and an increasingly sophisticated Client has caused individual full service Brokers to discount price for their services and Transactions frequently below the “list price” or calculated price of their employer. A full service Brokerage may involve physical interaction (in person) with a specific Broker and/or with an electronic agent (“E-agent”). E-agents, essentially a virtual broker, conduct electronic negotiations that lead to an intermediated exchange/trade. Often, Brokerage firms themselves, use a cross network intermediated exchange through an electronic intermediary in order to buy and/or sell a given amount of a given security at a given price. Further, in more complex forms, an exchange may have multiple participants.
As the size and complexity of commerce and investment has grown, participants have become less interested in single securities or lists of specific securities and are becoming more interested in expressing their investments as Portfolios of securities. In turn, the lists of securities and Portfolios become more and more detailed resulting in a greater need for a means of monitoring both securities performance and Broker performance.
There is a growing need amongst the securities industry to implement a performance evaluation framework such that Brokers and salespeople can monitor their own personal performance and the firm, in turn, can monitor the performance of individual Brokers, individual Clients, and a plurality of other variables. These variables include branches, colleagues, regions, products, securities types, and the like. The industry lacks meaningful comparative evaluations other than gross production, commissions earned, and revenues. There is no central exchange where information relating to individual and company participants in the securities industry is pooled, transformed, and made available in order to improve the efficiency of pricing and client management.
It is an object of the present invention to obviate and/or mitigate at least some of the above mentioned difficulties.